Pirate Bay Countdown: Site Appears To Promise Return In February

The Pirate Bay may be counting down to a return. The well-known file-sharing site, that went down on December 9 after a raid, is hinting at a return date. Will the Pirate Bay return on February 1? Many users are hoping so, despite assertions in the torrenting community that the site is irrelevant.

After numerous rumors of return, the site began to show some activity on December 21, 2014. Despite users’ hopes, the Pirate Bay had not fully returned. Instead, a waving pirate flag let visitors to the site know that something was going on, and the Pirate Bay wouldn’t go down without still more of a fight.

Though Isohunt has provided the necessary data for others to mimic the Pirate Bay’s code and set up their own torrenting sites, the iconic site has something of a fan following, and many are holding out hopes for its return.

This week, the Pirate Bay gave the next ray of hope to users: a countdown appeared. With 28 days on the countdown, the Pirate Bay appears to be pointing at February 1, and hopes are up that this date might represent the full return of the site.

According to TorrentFreak, the counter on the site isn’t entirely new. However, it has fundamentally changed: while it previously counted up, keeping time since the raid and what appeared to be the end of the Pirate Bay, the timer now counts down, perhaps toward a full resurrection of the site.

TorrentFreak also notes that the site has seen other changes and effects since the December 21 return. Specifically, it has hosted a link to download a copy of The Interview, and has carried various cryptic messages.

Notably, when the torrenting site disappeared, one of the founders spoke about it, saying that it was no longer what he had envisioned, and that he wouldn’t mind if it the Pirate Bay was gone forever. He cited code that hadn’t been updated, flashy ads bearing women (some animated, others real) in skimpy costumes, and the fact that the internet community had come to simply expect that the Pirate Bay would always be there.

Isohunt has shared the code behind the site, in hopes that others would create new versions that would both replace the original site, and repair the deficits as defined by its creator, opening up, in the process, massive amounts of data to those seeking it. If this is the Pirate Bay’s return, though, all other sites may find themselves relegated again to second-place.